


tell me true

by clutzycricket



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Not Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:13:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24828118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clutzycricket/pseuds/clutzycricket
Summary: Ruby dreams, some nights. After Emma arrives, they are even stronger.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	tell me true

**Author's Note:**

> I found this in my google docs. Does this have anything to do with post-season one plot? Nope.

Sometimes, when Ruby dreams, her dreams get weird. Ever since Emma blew into town, they’ve gotten worse. 

Sometimes she dreams of travelling with Mary Margeret, riding hard on scenic cliffs, the schoolteacher’s prim and tame hair long and crazy curly, flying wild behind her as she laughs. Those nights, it is like having a best friend and older sister, an unflagging source of support.

The morning afterwards, she wakes, smiling in her pillow. Her life seems a bit easier, the back and forth with the customers friendly and light. She makes sure to add a bit of extra whipped cream in Mary Margeret’s cocoa those days, even if she didn’t actually do anything. 

Sometimes, she dreams of wolves, of racing through the forest. There is blood in her mouth, on her claws. (“There’s a bit of someone on your chin.”) There is power, and a rush of pure certainty, the sort that Ruby has never felt in her life. 

Those mornings? Ruby stretches out lazily, then picks her clothes like armor, heels a little higher than normal, bra providing more cleavage than is actually a good idea when running around all day. If her smiles are a bit sharper, her walk a bit more of a saunter, then nobody actually says anything, even if she usually gets more phone numbers left with her tips. (She has thirty-seven from Dr. Whale, which is kinda creepy, and she really should tell Emma about it in case Ruby pulls a Kathryn Nolan and gets kidnapped by some crazy person.)

The rarest dreams are of a man, someone with strange green-gray eyes and a wicked laugh, calling her Red and tracing shapes on her skin, calling her love and the most beautiful creature to ever exist, laughing as he kissed her, singing as he swept her about, coaxing her into contentment. She calls him a fool and a rogue and a bunch of other terms she learned from the romances Granny kept in the attic, bargaining for new songs and stories from far-off places.

Those mornings, she awakens to a wet pillow and a miserable mood, wearing her old button up and jeans, nearly snapping when some idiot puts his hand on her ass. 

So when the curse breaks, she manages to sit through maybe a quarter of the partying that starts before she stalks over to the Crossroads bar, Snow slowing down Granny so she can go confront the man she loves. Again. (At least, part of her thinks bitterly, this time she wasn’t like to eat him.)

He’s waiting there, eyes closed, laying on the bar like a corpse.

“You’re going to get a lot of customers soon,” Ruby pointed out, the heat taken out of her rage by the sight of him. 

“Aye,” he said, voice hoarse from disuse.  “I don’t think this is the sort of thing a man should be forced to deal with sober.”

Regina, Red knew, had not been all that creative. She’d merely borrowed from his own history. She’d stolen the Rhymer’s voice, his clever tongue. Twenty-eight years of silence, four times as long as his time with Maeve. The Rhymer who had traded seven years of time for a kiss from the queen of the Underfolk, and been forced to spend seven years in silence while surrounded by a feast for the senses. 

This time, not so much. 

“You had no way of remembering?” Ruby-Red asked. She wasn’t Ruby Lucas any more, but neither was she Red- even in Limbo, twenty-eight years of being someone else left its mark. 

“None that would extend to two people,” Thomas said, eyes finally open, seeming faintly backlit. She shook her head. She knew that look. It meant that sometime very soon, he was going to say…

“…Hmm,” Thomas said, swinging himself up with disturbing grace. 

Ha. She still had it.

No one had quite been willing to trust him at first- hello, seven years with a species people were afraid to call by name, and anyone who ate fey fruit wasn’t quite sane. Of course, Snow- and Charming- had been the only ones to really trust _her_ for a while, and as Red or Ruby, she had never been all that good at listening to common wisdom. Or common sense, as Granny would point out.

However, she was pretty sure he shouldn’t seem that practiced at sleeping on the bar. The dumbass hadn’t left the bar most nights, probably. He tended to forget normal human needs like food, sleep, and normal hours that people were awake.

“What?” Ruby asked, not particularly disturbed. He was smiling. That was a good thing. Probably.

“Nothing I need to share right now,” he mused. “It would probably ruin the moment when it happens.”

“Well, you’re ruining this moment,” Ruby said, smiling innocently. 

Her Rhymer raised an eyebrow and chuckled, and maybe some of Ruby’s old gaping wounds and scars healed a little more. Seeing Snow as Snow had started it, her sister in all but blood bright and confident and reunited with her true love and daughter. Seeing all the pieces of what was meant to have been starting to knit themselves together like broken bones finally allowed to heal right made everything feel more right.

Though, she reflected as he came closer, she could live without turning into a wolf again.


End file.
